This book opens a fresh chapter in the debate on local enterprise clusters and their strategies for upgrading in the global economy. The authors employ a novel conceptual framework in their research on industrial clusters in Europe, Latin America and Asia and provide new perspectives and insights for researchers and policymakers alike.

Governance in global value chains

The “sophistication” of exports: A new trade measure

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study empirically the relationships among organizational culture and product innovation.Design/methodology/approach – The paper formulates some hypotheses from the literature review. These hypotheses are tested using structural equations modelling with data collected from 420 firms.Findings – Organizational culture is considered to be one of the key elements in both enhancing and inhibiting innovation. The findings provide evidence about this proposition. While ad hocratic cultures could enhance the development of new products or services, hierarchical cultures inhibit product innovation.Research limitations/implications – First, the data in the study were collected from one source. A second limitation is the cross‐sectional design of this research. Finally, only four of the six features of the competing value model have been evaluated. Apart from overcoming these limitations, suggestions for future research are: use longitudinal studies and multiple informants; s...

Organizational culture as determinant of product innovation

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/17410.pdf

Revisiting the revisited terms of trade: will china make a difference?

Trade data are often classified by product characteristics in the trade, technology and development literature to analyze trade patterns, competitive performance and structural change. However, existing classifications are constrained in that trade data are far more detailed than the industry data on which categories are based (e.g. current classifications only have 4-5 technology groups). We propose a new classification - ‘sophistication’ - as a means of analyzing product characteristics in great detail, based on the average income of exporting economies. Sophistication captures more than technical characteristics; it includes product differentiation, production fragmentation, resource availability and other factors. However, it has the advantage of providing unique continuous scores for each product at any level of detail. We calculate sophistication scores for 237 exports at the 3-digit SITC level and 766 exports at the 4-digit level for 1990 and 2000 (detailed values can be provided on request). We show sophistication scores for exports by selected countries, technology groups and industries. Our intention is to provide a database for further empirical analysis.

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The 'Sophistication' Of Exports: A New Measure Of Product Characteristics

This paper seeks to build on theory, to develop new methods for understanding the nature and basis of sectoral and national competitive advantage, and to do so with a temporal perspective. Neo-Schumpeterian and evolutionary economics perspectives (which place innovation at the forefront of accumulation) highlight the importance of economic rents, barriers to entry and core competencies. There is no one measure that adequately reflects these barriers to entry, and much of the research has been concerned to generate proxies, each of which is in itself partial, but which together provide a comprehensive picture. During the late 1970s, preliminary work was undertaken on the unit price of UK trade as an indicator of relative technological competence. However, this approach has largely been neglected since then, receiving only sporadic attention in US literature, and at high levels of product aggregation. This paper utilizes this approach to try and reflect the dynamic process of shifting competitive advantage ...

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Amelia Santos Paulino

Papers

Innovation and Competitiveness: Trends in Unit Prices in Global Trade